A state judge has ruled that North Carolina's 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together is unconstitutional. A lawsuit challenging the law was brought last year by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a former Pender County sheriff's dispatcher. Deborah Hobbs, who had been living with her boyfriend, quit her job in 2004 after Sheriff Carson Smith demanded she marry her boyfriend or move out if she wanted to work for him.